1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus, a reproducing apparatus, a recording method, and a reproducing method so as to process (for example, record and reproduce) an captured image data and sound data.
2. Related Background Art
In recent years, a digital camera that captures image data and sound data and records the captured data in a recording medium such as a memory card has been developed.
In the digital camera, the captured image data and sound data are recorded as an image file and a sound file to the recording medium, respectively. An individual file stores property information of the captured data (such as photographed data, photographing mode, and photographing condition). To manage the image file and sound file, a method for recording the property information of each captured data as management information to a map file has been proposed.
In addition, there are needs for properly managing a special photographing operation for processing a plurality of images as one photographing unit such a sequential photographing operation and a panorama photographing operation.
As features of the digital camera, in addition to capturing image data and sound data, functions for managing various types of property information in association with captured data, displaying the property information along with the image data, and searching desired image data with a search keyword of the property information are desired. However, the property information of image data and sound data is not always expressed with fixed length data. To process various types of data including data for special photographing operations, variable length data is inevitably used. In addition, when text information that annotates image data is added as property information to the image data, it is impossible to treat the text information as fixed length data due to presence of various types of image data. On the other hand, data should be quickly searched. Moreover, to reduce the cost of the digital camera, the variable length data should be managed with a memory that does not have a large storage capacity.
In the digital camera, various types of data such as still image data and sound data are captured. Although a function for designating a desired type of data of such captured data and reproducing or deleting the designated data is desired, a simple display unit should be inevitably used due to the restrictions of size, weight, and cost of the apparatus. In this situation, a function for selecting desired image data or sound data is required. In addition, when various types of captured data and property information are managed with a map file, desired captured data should be searched corresponding to the map file corresponding to a simple method.
When a recording medium with a large capacity is used for the digital camera, many frames of image data can be photographed in comparison with the conventional silver salt type camera. In this case, even if the number of digits of the display unit is limited, frames of image data more than the number of digits of the display unit should be captured.
An object of the present invention is to provide a recording apparatus and a recording method for easily searching desired data from a recording medium in which different types of data have been recorded.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a recording apparatus and a recording method for easily searching data from the recording apparatus in which captured data has been stored in association with information of the recording apparatus.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a recording method and a recording apparatus for effectively recording and deleting captured data and various types of property data corresponding to the captured data.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a recording apparatus and a recording method having new functions.